Institute of Archaeology

Palimpsest Memoryscapes

Materializing and Mediating the Past in Sierra Leone

Combining
ethnographic, archaeological, archival and collections-based research, this
long-term research endeavour is concerned with exploring not only the politics
of the past in the present in Sierra
Leone, but also the very nature of the past
and its presence in this West African state. Broadly conceived as a work of
'spatial history', a central concern of the project is the exploration of the
relationship between sites of memory and the construction of postcolonial
national consciousness in this West African context.

The assumption here is not
that Western historiographical frameworks such as Nora's conceptualisation of les lieux de mémoire can be extended
unproblematically into non-Western contexts, but rather to use such frameworks
as platforms to interrogate the various 'regimes of memory' that coincide at
sites in the Sierra Leonean cultural landscape. In some contexts, these may be
dichotomised into 'colonising' and 'indigenous' forms of historical
consciousness, in others creolised into emergent hybrid historicities, but the
dominant metaphor is that of a palimpsest memoryscape in which multiple forms
of historical consciousness coexist in dynamic tension with one another,
producing unexpected juxtapositions and unanticipated interactions that become
strategic resources in regional, national and international political projects.